The Pregnant Lady

A story is told that in the old days when the wide, paved highways today were still narrow dirt roads, it took forever to get to Umingan, my hometown.

“Are we there yet?” hundreds of impatient bus passengers would ask, in regular intervals, no one in particular.

“Almost. Just watch out for the Pregnant Lady,” was their answer to their own question.

Then many years later (coming home to Umingan from anywhere), when roads were a bit improved, I would still crane my neck toward northeast, hoping that the Pregnant Lady would soon appear. She did not disappoint. She would be there in all her restful glory.

And I would chirp what people said before me, “Almost there!”

The pregnant lady is actually Mount Amurong, according to many people. (I googled it just now; it’s not listed anywhere.) Whoever baptized her Pregnant Lady, well, your guess is as good as mine. But no other name comes to mind—she does look like a reclining pregnant lady!

Now that the roads are fully cemented and the traveling time from Manila to our town, Umingan, has been cut in half or more, it is no longer necessary to watch out for the Pregnant Lady. She has become just a blur as you zoom by. Before you know it, you’re home.

But for me, the Pregnant Lady speaks volumes. It reminds me of my many “coming-home” and the excitement of “being almost there.” It tells me that I am, once again, revisiting my childhood, a niche in my heart that holds so many unique memories my three sons (who were all born and bred in Manila) cannot begin to understand.

They’re memories that alternately bring a grin on my face and a lump in my throat.

Which is probably why I re-live those happy thoughts in my book series, Oh Mateo! The Umingan scenes and people in those stories (12 books at last count) are real, although most of them have been deleted by “progress” or migration or death.

The trees I used to climb, the rice paddies I leaped over, the farm huts we napped in at harvest time, and the carabao carts we rode on—they’re gone now. The rivers, which were our swimming pools, are either dried up or have become garbage dumps.

But the Pregnant Lady, she is as she was—unmoving, unchanging. She will always be a monument of all that I was as a child, and of how grace has sustained me—then and now.